Cypress Nights Read Online Free PDF Page B

what he was sayin’.”
    â€œYes,” was all Cyrus could think of to say.
    â€œOzaire and me, we value working here.”
    It wasn’t always quite true but Cyrus said, “I value both of you.”
    Lil’s shoulders dropped a couple of inches and she smiled tentatively. Her new “do,” a reddish-brown dye job on short hair combed upward all around, reminded Cyrus of Peter Pan. Even the top of the hair stood up.
    â€œThis couldn’t have happened to Jim because of the school,” Lil said. “Some people really don’t want it, but I can’t think of a one who’d do something like this to Jim.”
    â€œNeither can I.”
    â€œThere’s a lot of older folk who resent the school idea. They want a big activity center that’s mainly for them. They’ve wanted it for years.”
    And so had Lil and Ozaire, but Cyrus didn’t mention the obvious. Ozaire in particular had wanted the site of the old schoolhouse, burned out many years before Cyrus arrived in Toussaint, replaced by a multipurpose building where he could open a gym—paying rent to the church, of course.
    â€œLil,” Cyrus said quietly, “Bleu is the person to talk to about space and cost. She’s already mentioned the possibility of both a school and another facility. We all know the parish hall is too small.”
    â€œToo small for anything,” Lil muttered. “Not even big enough for a good bingo game.”
    â€œI think it manages the bingo games just fine,” he said, so tired that he longed to put his head down.
    â€œWhat will they do to Kate Harper then? Put her in jail, I suppose.” Lil didn’t look pleased at the thought. Kate was one who always showed for bingo.
    â€œThe less said on that subject, the better,” Cyrus said incredulously. “I can’t imagine where Ozaire got such a wild notion. And I don’t expect you to mention it again,Lil. This is a police matter, of course. They’re the ones who’ll find the murderer.”
    â€œPlenty of folks know Kate Harper took advantage of Jim,” Lil said, the color in her face rising. “He paid for everything—”
    â€œYou don’t know that,” Cyrus said.
    â€œEveryone does. They all know Jim paid off Kate’s mortgage. Her husband didn’t have anything to leave her. Jim did.”
    He wanted to walk away and not hear what Lil was going to suggest next. “Okay, what are you saying?” Best get this over with.
    Shrugging, with tears suddenly spilling over, she said, “I don’t want to talk bad about anyone, but sometimes Kate said things about Jim. She’d call him ‘set in his ways.’ He was in a rut, and she couldn’t make him get out of it. She…Kate wanted to go dancing and have some fun—that’s what she told me. I used to tell her she should be past that.” She paused, cleared her throat. “Kate said she had plenty of dancin’ time left and she might just have to find herself a younger man to be her partner.”
    He waited.
    Lil wiped at her tears with the back of one arm, and left patches of white flour on her cheeks. “Now I’ve started, I better finish. Jim had plenty. No family, everything come to him after his mother died, and a good job in the surveyor’s office all those years. And he left everything to Kate.”
    And so he had the story according to Toussaint’s amateur sleuths. “How did Kate kill Jim?”
    A fresh torrent of tears made Lil’s words unintelligible. With her apron held over her face, she wept.
    As much as he wanted to, Cyrus didn’t comfort Lil.
    She blotted her cheeks and looked at him with red and swollen eyes. “I don’t know,” she said in a tiny voice.
    â€œYou do know how he died?”
    â€œHe was stabbed,” she said.
    â€œWhere? The details?”
    Lil shook her head. “In his back, I suppose. Oh, I